I'm reminded of the anecdote about an 8 year old Gauss, whose teacher, wanting to keep the class occupied, asked them to sum the numbers 1 to 100, only for him to almost immediately come up with 5050

@TheEternalVortex42

10 ай бұрын

It's apocryphal though

@rmsgrey

10 ай бұрын

@@TheEternalVortex42 Some spot research finds that a version of the story was published as early as 1856 (a year after Gauss's death) as an example of the sort of fond memories Gauss had (and liked to share) of his childhood, though in that version it was just described as an arithmetic series (assuming I've correctly translated the German phrase). In 1877, there was a version where the series was given as 1 to 40. In 1906, the familiar 1-100 version had emerged. And in 1937, the series was described as "The problem was of the following sort, 81297 + 81495 + 81693 + ... + 100899, where the step from one number to the next is the same all along (here 198), and a given number of terms (here 100) are to be added." So the precise sequence is apocryphal (though 1-100 is pretty plausible) but the posing of some summation is at least reportedly based on Gauss's own first-hand account.

Thank you Numberphile2 for these amazing insights into living, breathing mathematicians and their work. The dead guys had it their own way for far too long.

Thanks for this podcast, I really love videos on Numberphile featuring Federico, I even watched some of his combinatorics lectures on KZread and I like them!

I was looking up polytopes and found his lessons.

Man makes me wish I were a publisher. That is a good-sounding instrument.

It’ll be great to have June Huh next on the podcast!

RieMANN ? 1859? i G0T THAT 1?